The Monty Hall Problem is a counter-intuitive brain teaser based on the TV game show “Let’s Make a Deal” hosted by Monty Hall. In the game, you are given 3 doors. Behind one door is a car and the other two doors have goats. Only the Host knows what’s behind the doors and once you have selected your door, he opens one of the other doors with a goat and offers you the chance to choose a different door. Should you switch your choice or just stick with your original decision?

The answer is that you should switch. It was proven mathematically back in 1975 to provide a 2/3 change of winning the car if you switch but only a 1/3 change if you keep your original, but why are the odds in your favor when switching? The reason is that they are removing one of the wrong choices for you.

When you first choose, you had a 1/3 change of picking the correct door. Whereas there is a 2/3 chance that one of the other doors had the Car. Now imagine that your initial pick was wrong. That means that the car must be in one of the other two doors. If they open the door that it is NOT in, then the car must always be in the other door. So… in other words, switching effectively gives you the better of two doors which means that 2/3 of the time you will win if you switch.

The illustrations below are an excel file that I generated with random numbers, so it does not add up to exactly 1/3 in each column but still illustrates the point. If you look at the middle illustration it shows you what would happen, if you picked door 1 as your first choice 30 times. You will notice that if you picked a goat on your first pick, Monty eliminates the other goat every time. Consequently, if your first guess was wrong you have a 100% chance of picking the right door the second time, which represents 2 out of 3 doors. To state that again, because your odds of picking the right door the first time were 1/3 and if you were wrong you are now guaranteed to get it right switching. this means that staying with the same door gives you a 1/3 chance of being right and a 2/3 change if you switch.

I was nice of Mr. Hall to give you the best of 2 doors effectively combining their odds to give you a 2/3 chance.

Policy enforcement on amazon is a difficult task. Amazon has provided some tools to support policy enforcement but in general Amazon does not want to take on any direct role in compliance enforcement on behalf of brands, leaving it up to you to ensure that retailers comply with corporate policies. In the following we discuss the different ways we have seen Brands enforce compliance.

Brand Registry – This is the first step in combatting unauthorized sellers. This requires you to have a registered trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office or similar service in other countries as you need your registration number to register your brand. This tool is best used for shutting down listings that are not listed under your brand name. This is when the title/images are of your product but the brand is not your main brand. e. if you do not allow retailers to bundle your product with other brands and list under their UPC. This tool is also the best way to address counterfeit sellers who are selling on the approved listings as you do have the ability to single out sellers in this tool and specify them as selling counterfeit product. However, this tool is not useful for eliminating retailers that are buying product through legitimate channels.

Brand Gating – This is when Amazon blocks listing creation for any seller that is not on the list of approved sellers. This is the most effective way to keep unauthorized sellers off a listing but has several challenges including being leaky (not every ASIN will be block) and overly restrictive (your authorized retailers will be blocked from time to time) and must be constantly updated.

Cease & Desist Notice – This is the second legal way to address retailers you don’t want selling product on Amazon. However, to enforce, you need to know who the seller is, and you need to have a clear policy in place that they are subject to, meaning you must first adopt an internet policy that all retailers must agree to abide by. This policy should prohibit the sale of product on Amazon unless specifically allowed. Once this policy is in place, any sales on Amazon by an unauthorized retailer constitutes trademark infringement if they sell on listings that use photos supplied by you or content supplied by you. The challenge is that you need to know who the seller is in order to enforce any threats of legal action that you may imply and amazon does not share seller information with anyone. Finding out who a seller is takes time and a skilled investigator.

Selling Used as New – The third legal way to address unauthorized retailers is through warranty. Amazon requires that all product sold on the site as “New” must carry the original manufacturer’s warranty. If a warranty requires that product be purchased through an authorized retailer, then any offerings from unauthorized retailers cannot be sold as “New” on the platform. Because this violates an Amazon policy, it falls on Amazon to enforce this. Amazon has a contact us form in the brand registry for this type of compliance. It is their “Report a violation of our rules” form available in the brand registry. From your price monitoring report, select all the ASINS that the violator is selling and submit the entire list to amazon. This process, like everything else is slow, requires a test buy first, and is only partially effective, but when done continuously, can be quite effective.

Attack Seller Rating – This is when a brand will place several orders from an unauthorized seller and leave negative feedback. When a seller gets a lot of negative feedback, it affects their ability to be competitive and ultimately stop selling on problematic listings. This method is used by a lot of brands even though it is against Amazon policy. Amazon does allow buying from other sellers, but does not allow leaving feedback for the purpose of manipulating feedback. However, for small brands that do not have a registered trademark it may feel like their only method of dealing with counterfeiters.

Our recommendation in methods is to be vigilant on all approved fronts (we do not advise point 5 if you ever plan to sell under your own acct). If you are continuously sending Cease & Desist Notices, continually gating ASINS, making test purchases, and filing claims with Amazon, eventually the unauthorized sellers will depart and when you have clean listings all at MAP, you have laid the foundation to transition Amazon from an e-commerce platform to a branding and marketing platform that supports all retailers.

]]>https://www.thinkbigsites.com/biggest-challenge-brands-experience-on-amazon-is-policy-enforcement/feed/0Don’t get your amazon account shut downhttps://www.thinkbigsites.com/dont-get-your-amazon-account-shut-down/
https://www.thinkbigsites.com/dont-get-your-amazon-account-shut-down/#respondMon, 10 Sep 2018 18:47:13 +0000https://www.thinkbigsites.com/?p=1167In my 10 years selling on Amazon and consulting with other sellers, I have encountered several circumstances of sellers with good intentions getting shut down. Detailed below are the different circumstances that led to their store getting shut down and what the implications were. Operating multiple stores. You must have approval to own multiple stores. […]

]]>In my 10 years selling on Amazon and consulting with other sellers, I have encountered several circumstances of sellers with good intentions getting shut down. Detailed below are the different circumstances that led to their store getting shut down and what the implications were.

Operating multiple stores. You must have approval to own multiple stores. They associate stores by the EIN on file, by credit card on file, and by bank information on file. If you have multiple companies selling on amazon, make sure they truly operate as separate entities.

Pricing Error. I had an employee shift the rows on a pricing spreadsheet and we uploaded the wrong prices for thousands of items. Amazon detected an anomalous change in sell rate and closed the store for my protection. It saved me from thousands of orders I need to cancel (only got about 180 orders in 5 min before they shut off the account) but it still took 4 weeks to get it reopened.

Fake Reviews. Amazon has taken a zero-tolerance stance on artificial reviews. They probably deem it artificial if you left the review, a family member left the review, an account with the same credit card as you left the review, a lot of people who leave reviews get refunded afterwards, a lot of people leave reviews after using a discount code, a review is left by a person that is known to leave fake reviews, you send review requests and encourage 5 star reviews. Amazon is VERY quiet about how they police review violations. They will shut you down abruptly and they will not consider your appeal or give any kind of explanation. If you cannot afford to have your store permanently shut down, don’t even think about manipulating reviews. There are plenty of legitimate ways to generate momentum on amazon.

Counterfeit/Trademark Claims. Complaints happen even if you only sell 100% legitimate products. If you get too many un-addressed claims your store will get shut down and will need to prove that you bought original product. Best thing to do is keep receipts so that you can prove it is legitimate product and address them quickly. It typically takes 3 to 6 weeks to get a store reopened so don’t ignore unaddressed claims.

Have listings for restricted product. Years ago, we listed a bunch of drop ship products in a store I helped setup, but never actually added inventory to the listings or send them live. There were gun holsters in this long list of drop ship products and amazon deemed the holsters a restricted product and closed the listings for this product. The inactive listings stayed in the account for a couple of years and then one day amazon shut down the account without notice for selling restricted products. Weapons and Health/Beauty are the categories where amazon is constantly shutting down restricted products. We have found the best course of action is to delete a listing every time you get a removal of restricted product notice. Make sure you delete the sku each time you see one of these notices and you are probably ok. You also need to put in place a mechanism to ensure you don’t relist.

High Order Cancellation rate. This is a very common reason for getting shut down along with a high rate of late shipping. If you can’t ship on time and don’t have good inventory control, you should plan on developing a fulfilled by amazon (FBA) program. You can appeal this type of closure with a good plan of action but if you get shut down multiple times it will be permanent.

Poor seller review rating. This is probably the most common way to get shut down and new sellers are the most vulnerable. You may not feel that the negative reviews are justified but Amazon does not care. The best way to keep your review rating high is to use the FBA program. When an order is FBA, amazon takes responsibility for order fulfillment and consequently you can have most negative feedback struck. You should also regularly monitor feedback to see what it is about. A lot of negative seller feedback is about the product itself which you can request be struck. Plan to check your feedback on a regular schedule and submit requests to remove negative feedback. What remains cannot be removed and the best way to prevent these is good old fashion customer service. That means the customer is ALWAYS right and you need to communicate well. You are busy, but don’t be abrupt with customers and give them exactly what they request and consider it the cost of doing business. For example, I sell shoes on amazon in my store and I can’t be profitable selling shoes on amazon if I offered free return shipping, but it is my policy that 100% of those that contact me about return shipping get it.

Marketplaces are the future of commerce. Every independent retailer can and should be selling on Amazon; don’t let inexperience get you shut down before you get the chance to experience the full potential of Amazon.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not rocket science. You don’t need an advanced degree to either do it or understand it. However, a basic understanding of Third-grade math does help, because while there are countless strategies to SEO, all the legitimate ones can be easily simplified into one basic algebra expression: Message + Consistency (Content + Links) = Traffic * Conversion = Revenue.

Let’s break down this equation down to see what it is saying. First, while the SEO industry is not technically about your marketing message, there is little point trying to do SEO on a site that is not going to convert visitors into clients. If you are going to embark on an SEO program, you really need to start by making sure that you are selling the right message. This starts with your branding and asking yourself the question, what are you trying to convey to your customer when they land on your site. You should ask this question for every page of your site and also consider seriously which pages you don’t want customers landing on. This can be just as important. Once you have figured out what message you want to convey, the next question to ask is what do you want the visitor to do if the message is right for them. This leads to the call to action. If you are a service provider, this usually means giving you a call. If you are e-commerce, this usually means adding a product to the cart. Your message should immediately flow into this call to action.

Once you have the right message, the next step is highly repetitive. Add content to your site and then get people to link to that content. Do this over and over and over again. The question is what keywords to focus on and where to put this content. Ideally, the best place to put the content is on the page that you want to be ranked for that keyword. For example, if you own a construction company and do both electrical and plumbing work in Manhattan New York, you would want to add content focused on the keyword Plumbing in Manhattan on the www.whatever.com/plumbing page of your site. Try to avoid adding electrical to that page because that is another keyword that can confuse the search engines with regard to what that page is really about. If you do have to use electrical on the page to make it flow naturally, make sure to link out the keyword to an electrical-related page on your site so that the search engines know that it is a different page on your site that is most important for that keyword.

A difficult challenge in the modern age is balancing content with flow of a page. Many sites (especially to be mobile friendly) can’t really handle much on page content. Adding too much can cause your conversions to suffer. This does make SEO more difficult and most SEO firms don’t really want to balance out this dilemma. However, when you can’t get any more content on a page than is already there, you need to make sure that the existing content is perfectly optimized and then you need to continue to add content elsewhere on the site and on this other site, make sure that the target keywords are present and link to the real page that you want people to land on. It is not as valuable as having those keywords on the right page, to begin with, but is the next best thing. This strategy is particularly important for e-commerce SEO when most e-commerce platforms don’t really allow you to add content to the category pages where most of your customers are going to land.

Once you have added the content, you need to generate links back to your site. This is definitely the most difficult part of SEO because you don’t have much control over the process. In most cases, it is about sharing your content with others and asking if they like the content and would like to share it with others. A good SEO firm probably has several partners that help in this process so that the odds of others linking to the content goes way up. It used to be that you could use sharing sites (like article directories) to share your content with thousands of people, but it has been over 6 years since Google penalized those sites and rendered them useless. Links are definitely the most impactful part of the equation as they are the difference between position 300 in the search engine and position 1. Our philosophy at think big is that content on your site makes you eligible to move position in the search engines and links to your site are what get you moving higher in the search rankings. One does not work without the other.

By adding content to your site (keywords) and linking to that content, you get increased traffic to your site and by fixing your message and making sure that the content is informative and useful, you increase your conversion rate. More traffic and improved conversion both lead to more revenue which is the end goal of every SEO Program.

Have you ever questioned why your SEO firm is a monthly charge rather than a one time program? It may seem like SEO is a linear process, whereby you add the content for every keyword you want to rank for and then move on to building links and then watch rank grow with time. I assure you that SEO is by no means linear. It is a highly cyclical process by which you continually refine your content, add more content, and continually link to that content.

The cycle starts with research. Decide what keywords to focus on begins with who your target audience is and what is your product/service. The real strategy behind the research element is deciding what is going to give you the best return on your investment. This is because it would be incredibly costly and nearly impossible to be ranked for certain keywords. The internet market has matured and the very algorithms that made google who they are have resulted in most web traffic consolidating in the biggest players in their markets. You have probably observed this issue yourself which can make one feel defeated before even embarking on a search engine optimization program. At the top of the page are the paid ads followed by directory type sites. These are the biggest sites on the internet that have spent millions of dollars building links and are just massive directories of information but are nine times out of ten not really what a customer is looking for. Wikipedia is usually the first. It is probably amazon taking the next 4 spots on the list. Followed by various directories. It may feel like you have little opportunity to compete online at all, but you can compete; it really comes down to how you select your keywords. Selecting those keywords is beyond the scope of this article, but in short, get into a google adwords program and look up keywords that are relevant to your services, google will then suggest hundreds of variations on those keywords and let you know how much traffic those other keywords get each month. Look for multi word keywords with decent traffic. The more keywords in the phrase, the easier it is to get ranked for those keywords, but conversely the fewer number of searches being done. For example, you may not be able to rank for electrician quote, but you can rank for electrician quote in New York or for commercial electrician quote (just examples).

Once you have decided which keywords to go after, you need to make sure those keywords are on your site. No matter how many links come into your site, if you don’t have the target keyword on your site, google is not going to deem you relevant. The strategy in this phase is where to place those keywords. You first need to decide what the ideal number of pages to have on your site and where customers should land. You don’t want customers looking for an electrician quote to show up on your contact us page first. To prevent this, you need to make sure that you are not using Electrician Quote on the contact us page and instead use Electrician quote on the Electrician services page and add contact us information in your call to action on the electrician page. Then make sure that your keywords are in the title of the page, in the H1 tag and in the body of the page. You may want to be targeting multiple phrases, but can’t really build out a single page for each keyword, so the next step is to think about your secondary keywords. The most important keyword will go in the H1 and title and be multiples times through the content, the secondary keywords can be put into sub sections with H2, H3, H4 tags followed by mentions in the content, just don’t try to get too many secondary keywords onto the same page. It will end up being counterproductive towards the overall SEO program. Secondary keywords should be limited to variants of the target keyword.

After keywords have been added to your site, you need to give your statements credibility. Anyone can add keywords to their site, but google does not necessarily trust that because the keyword is there that you are the most relevant result for that keyword. That is where link building comes into play. As you get others to link to the page with content, the search engines give you greater credit that your keywords are relevant. Some links are more credible than other links and the structure of the link can have a large impact, but overall, if someone links to this content, then you are more likely to have a better position in the search engine rankings.

The next step is to let google recrawl your site. They are regularly doing this although the frequency depends a lot on how often you add content, how many pages you have, and how many inbound links you have. You have to give them time to find the new keywords and decide how valuable the new content is to search engines. You should generally wait 2 to 4 weeks to let the changes trickle into search engine rankings.

After a couple of weeks it is then time to start the process over. Get into your rank tracking software and look to see which target keywords you are ranking for. If your content was good, you will start to rank for keywords that you did not rank for previously. If your content was inadequate, you will still not show up. It is also possible to lose rank on a page because you added the wrong keywords and has made google confused about what the true subject of the page is. After seeing how you rank after an on page content change, you are now ready to determine which pages you still need to focus on (no search engine ranking yet) and can focus your next round of research and content on those pages. The pages where you now rank for a target keyword should be the pages that you would want to focus your link building energy on and will instead monitor growth in rankings rather than the presence of a rank. After a few months, it may make sense to add more content related to that keyword, but you don’t want to be too quick to add content to a page that is already ranked as you risk compromising the established rank.

To summarize, while SEO is formulaic in how it is done, the formula must be repeated continually keeping in mind that while it is fine to continually add content to your blog, with regards to your key page content, you need to make sure that you space out content additions to give time for the search engines to provide feedback on the content in the form of search engine rankings.